The best sale of the year fell to my active partner.  Before the shipping season opened, he sold, range count, our holdings on the Medicine River, including saddle stock, improvements, and good will.  The cattle might possibly have netted us more by marketing them, but it was only a question of time until the flow of immigration would demand our range, and Major Hunter had sold our squatter’s rights while they had a value.  A new foreman had been installed on our giving up possession, and our old one had been skirmishing the surrounding country the past month for a new range, making a favorable report on the Eagle Chief in the Outlet.  By paying a trifling rental to the Cherokee Nation, permission could be secured to hold cattle on these lands, set aside as a hunting ground.  George Edwards had been rotting all summer in issuing cows at Indian agencies, but on the first of October the residue of his herds would be put in pastures or turned free for the winter.  Major Hunter had wound up his affairs at The Bend, and nothing remained but a general settlement of the summer’s work.  This took place at Council Grove, our silent partner and Edwards both being present.  The profits of the year staggered us all.  I was anxious to go home, the different outfits having all gone by rail or overland with the remudas, with the exception of the two from Uvalde, which were property of the firm.  I had bought three hundred extra horses at The Bend, sending them home with the others, and now nothing remained but to stock the new range in the Cherokee Outlet.  Edwards and my active partner volunteered for this work, it being understood that the Uvalde remudas would be retained for ranch use, and that not over ten thousand cattle were to be put on the new range for the winter.  Our silent partner was rapidly awakening to the importance of his usefulness in securing future contracts with the War and Indian departments, and vaguely outlining the future, we separated to three points of the compass.

CHAPTER XIV

ESTABLISHING A NEW RANCH

I hardly knew Fort Worth on my return.  The town was in the midst of a boom.  The foundations of many store buildings were laid on Monday morning, and by Saturday night they were occupied and doing a land-office business.  Lots that could have been bought in the spring for one hundred dollars were now commanding a thousand, while land scrip was quoted as scarce at twenty-five cents an acre.  I hurried home, spoke to my wife, and engaged two surveyors to report one week later at my ranch on the Clear Fork.  Big as was the State and boundless as was her public domain, I could not afford to allow this advancing prosperity to catch me asleep again, and I firmly concluded to empty that little tin trunk of its musty land scrip.  True enough, the present boom was not noticeable on the frontier, yet there was a buoyant feeling in the air that betokened a brilliant future.  Something enthused me, and as my creed was land and cattle, I made up my mind to plunge into both to my full capacity.